Chumash

The Chumash are a Native American people of California's central and southern coast, their territory from Morro Bay to Malibu and the Northern Channel Islands, ancestors having lived there at least eleven thousand years. Before contact they held over 150 villages of related Chumashan languages, an isolate.

Island craftsmen made olive-shell bead currency for a trade network reaching Arizona, and tomol sewn-plank canoes served fishing, whaling and island-mainland travel; their rock art and basketry rank among California's most elaborate.

Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo made first European contact in 1542, but large-scale colonization awaited the Portolá expedition of 1769. From 1772 to 1817 five Franciscan missions drew nearly all Chumash into the system, disease and forced labour cutting them down. The 1824 Chumash Revolt, begun at Santa Inés, was among Spanish California's largest Native uprisings, and Mexico's 1833 secularization dissolved the missions without restoring land.